1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an apparatus for inhibitively preventing birds such as pigeons, crows or the like from gathering at a veranda, handrail of stairs, rooftop or the like, and from unpleasant contamination with their droppings.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, more and more birds such as pigeons, crows, sparrows, gray starlings or the like are becoming inhabitant in residential areas in proportion to the increase of residential sections and the decrease of forests caused by the expanding population.
These birds are liable to gather on the rooftop of buildings, verandas of condominiums or the like, and to contaminate these places not only with their droppings and fallen feathers but also with discharging infectious bacilli. However, out of the spirit to prevent cruelty to animals, any means such that the bird's blood is shed should be refrained from use. In view of foregoing fact, various proposals have been made with respect to an apparatus for inhibitively preventing birds from approaching by scaring them away or the like.
Particular attention has been paid to the fact that a bird dislikes powerful magnetism which adversely affects its biological magnetism, which the bird possesses and uses for determining the direction of flight or as the guidepost to return to its home position by itself, and various apparatuses for inhibitively preventing birds from gathering have been proposed, in which the use of magnets is featured.
For example, Japanese Utility Model Publication No. 4-10789 "An Apparatus for Inhibitively Preventing Pigeons from Crowding" discloses an apparatus, in which a tension wire is tightly spanned between two adjacent support columns, and hemispherically-shaped magnets are latched along said tension wire. With this structure, the magnetism generated by the magnets deprives the polarity of the magnet in a pigeon's body and prevents it from flying thereto.
Magnetism is, however, generally effective for preventing pigeons, but there are some pigeons which are not sensitive to the magnetic field. In fact, experiments show that some pigeons perched on the tension wire between adjacent said hemispherically-shaped magnets. Such result is not satisfactory to users.
To cope with the foregoing problem, the present invention proposes an apparatus for inhibitively preventing birds from gathering which is characterized in that a wire-shaped member is tightly spanned first between two adjacent support columns in the horizontal direction, then a plurality of rotatable cylindrical hollow magnetic members and cylindrical hollow members are rotatably fitted onto said wire-shaped member as to cover the latter without any exposure thereof (Japanese Utility Model Application No. 7-28379).
This apparatus prevents birds from gathering by repelling many of them with a high intensity of magnetic field generated from the magnets inserted through with the wire-shaped member, and also by rotating of rotatable cylindrical hollow members which cover the wire-shaped member. If an insensitive bird should try to perch on the wire-shaped member, the cylindrical hollow members turn around and around, unabling the bird's feet to seize thereon, resulting in the bird amazingly flying away from the cylindrical hollow members. Thus, birds can not perch on it. The cylindrical hollow magnetic members also prevent birds in the same manner as cylindrical hollow members do. When a bird tries to perch directly on it, it rotates itself around the wire-shaped member in the same manner as aforementioned, advantageously resulting in the bird amazingly flying away therefrom.
However, when an apparatus in which the magnetic members 3' and the cylindrical hollow members 5' are disposed onto the wire-shaped member 2' tightly spanned between said two support columns 1' is mounted at a location, e. g., at a window frame of a building or the like as shown in FIG. 13, there occurs inconvenience such as normal getting into/out of the room through the window by people for window cleaning, additional construction work, fire fighting operation or the like. In such cases, the wire-shaped member 2' in said apparatus became a kind of obstacle for work, causing workmen inconvenience to step it over each time. One way to remove this inconvenience is to make the support column 1' detachable by using a screw or the like, but it is troublesome to attach and detach many of the screws at height every time work is done. Thus, workmen often resulted in treading on the wire-shaped member 2' with shoes, causing a fear that the wire-shaped member 2' might slack or break, or the support column 1' might fall down when only some adhesive was usable, because the location for mounting did not allow the use of screws to fit the support column 1' thereon. It was feared that the effect for repelling birds might decrease in such a way.